Other people are also working day and night to suck out as much value from those companies as possible. Let's not ignore the multiple tried-and-true strategies for siphoning wealth from common-stock shareholders into the pockets of CEOs and board members. That is what the CEOs of most publicly-traded companies are spending their time trying to do. Would you rather own a shiny hunk of gold, or a paper whose value is constantly under attack from smart, Harvard-educated parasites?